18 September 2008

Apparently a Turkish author, Adnan Oktar, got his lawyers to convince Turkish Telekom provider to block Dawkin's website on the grounds that ... he [Oktar ] and his creationist book 'Atlas of Creation' had been defamed by comments made by Dawkins on the site.

Either his lawyers are straight out of Law and Order and exceptionally persuasive or the power granted to this one single person in Turkey is frightening ... and wrong.

How can one person be capable of blocking so many sites? Where does he get the influence and the power? And more importantly, what right does he have to decide what millions of Turkish people should think or watch online?

By the way, read this bit on the Wordpress blog. It has communication from Oktar's lawyers and reasons why they wanted to block Wordpress.

I am going to quote the bit at the end:

There is a lesson which all blog services and internet service providers should take from this judgement. Blog services, especially the ones that give free service, should be careful about the sites that are illegally active through their firms. These services should not remain insensitive to the complints that they receive and especially to the judgements. It is certain that the services which behave opppositely will meet with the same enforcement that Wordpress met.

Lesson all must learn? Isn't this country part of EU? How can they repress freedom of speech like this and issue such threats?